


A Sunday Morning Cigarette

by drneroisgod



Category: H.I.V.E. Series - Mark Walden
Genre: Experimental Style, F/M, Romance, Vacation, a geriatric romance, sinistrike
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:15:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28272228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drneroisgod/pseuds/drneroisgod
Summary: they are on vacation together but no, they are not in love
Relationships: Professor Pike/Contessa Maria Sinistre
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	A Sunday Morning Cigarette

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VulpixSinistre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VulpixSinistre/gifts).



they are not in love, no. 

they are together by the ocean drinking coffee on a sunday morning and they are not in love even though her hand is in his and they are laughing. they are in white hotel bathrobes in seedy patio furniture in the blissful warmth of a caribbean morning and they are outside, for once, outside. breakfast is astonishingly simple: heirloom tomatoes with feta cheese and basil on crackers, and praline pecans their teeth are not strong enough to break. he pops one in his mouth to suck the sugar free. she sets a few on the table and shatters them with the end of a spoon. 

“what do you think?” she asks, either to him or to the horizon.

he settles back in his chair and sighs with perfect satisfaction. in the distance, some unseen young citizen splits the air with a wail, though the sunrise is as red as their tomatoes and gasoline-powered boats dot the waves. “i think someone is still a little sleepy.”

“maybe she’s hungry,” she replies, but her words are unweighted. they don’t know much about babies. theirs were for holding and passing on to the next pair of arms, when they were young and wanted babies, or thought they did. 

she buried her baby beneath snake skins and thyme leaves many summers back. his babies moved on. he does not expect to hear from them again. 

this is why they are not in love. they have walked with love. reflected on it. they have abandoned love, divorced love, held its hand as it died, submitted its obituary to the paper, not once but twice. love is in the pile of unsent birthday cards lost in his office, in the jewelry box she meant to pass on one day. love is old and they are tired. it was easier, in the end, to charter a helicopter and lay on a beach. it is not love but it is fun and it is in their ticket stubs and their drained tea bags and their pill dispensers. 

“i’m glad we came,” he says. “i mean that.”

these words are free, the first free words in months. in the belly of a volcano, their conversations are not really conversations, just as their romance is not really love. prolonged eye contact is profoundly unsafe at home. they belong to hungry, cave-dwelling students for whom rumors are the closest things they have to sunlight. 

“italy,” she coaxed him, there, her mouth barely moving. “spain. mexico. morocco. greece. thailand.”

“maria,” he sighed.

“professor.”

he looked out at the children, playing their games and coding their viruses. “all my things are here.”

“fine,” she said. “then i’ll pick.”

they were not in love, but they did make it to the ocean. the salt in the air refreshed his wax paper lungs. the humidity did nothing for her hair. in bed together that first night they fell asleep watching gene kelly on the television. if he sang like an angel, it wasn’t for them. 

she is a lady and refills his coffee for him. “do you think nero suspects?”

“probably,” he grins.

“we were subtle.”

“have you ever known him to miss a trick?”

she tosses her head defiantly. “you respect him too much.”

“maybe i do.”

he looks at her and he does not love her, but love is cunning in its invisibility. he does not know that she loves like a sand dune, immense and disintegrating and hot to the touch. her strange love is broad and insurmountable. lovers have choked on it and husbands have drowned in it and daughters have dissolved inside it. only a handful have known that her love is wound tight in curlers and as sticky as lemon juice mixed with blood. they are still getting to know one another. he trusts that there is more to her than bullet casings and whispered magic words, but, even if there is not, they are not in love so what does it matter?

he wants her smile and her attention, nothing more. that, for him, is enough.

coming to this conclusion, he spits out a naked pecan and sets it on the side of his dish with the others, where they will dry uneaten beneath the sun. he samples a tomato, a basil leaf, a cracker, a fingerful of cheese. then he finds another pecan to set beneath his tongue and she wonders, why him? why me?

she likes him. of course she likes him. he is nutmeg spilled on a chessboard mid-game, he is overdue library books and stray computer keys found between the sofa cushions. he is the pair of pliers that were confiscated from his carry-on luggage. she feels she understands him, and so it is odd she does not understand why she is drawn to him. they are unlike. he is messy. he is thoughtless. his affection is like a constellation, vast and beautiful and often contrived. she has never spent much time studying the stars. 

they can see that the beach is beginning to fill with tourists. bright swimsuits, root beer bottles, broken umbrellas. she pulls a silver case from her bathrobe pocket and extracts a single white cigarette, placing it between her teeth as she lights it. her first puff is better than all the heirloom tomatoes in the world. 

“enjoying yourself?” he asks.

she grunts in the affirmative.

he holds out a hand. “give it here.”

she sets it between his fingers carefully. her red lipstick has stained the end but that does not stop him from bringing it to his own lips and taking a long drag himself. when he breathes he is not the dragon but the knight. and in that breath, he is young and reckless again. 

“you know those things are no good for you,” she says, taking it back for her turn. 

“some might say the same about you.”

her smile is thin and fire-breathing. “good.”

for the rest of the morning, they let the ocean speak for them. they enjoy the sand castles and the sailboats and the sunlight and the salt. when the cigarette burns down she crushes it on the dish next to his discarded naked pecans and, in the same movement, reaches for her case to pull out another. 


End file.
